


Just take me back to yours that will be fine

by consultinggalpals



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Time, Fluff, M/M, cahooting, hand holding, they have sex but its of the ~ineffable~ kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 11:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19228624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consultinggalpals/pseuds/consultinggalpals
Summary: They hold hands. That's it.





	Just take me back to yours that will be fine

**Author's Note:**

> thanks darcylindbergh for beta'ing <3

They first interlace fingers on the bus. It's unclear if one reached out first or if their hands just naturally gravitated towards each other until no space was left between them.

They don't mention it, of course. Mentioning it would make it real and neither of them feels quite ready to bare their entire soul for the other to see. It's a discussion better had behind closed doors and they both know it.

So they sit in companionable silence as the English countryside slides past them, grounded in the reality of the other's physical existence through that single point of contact.

They're still holding hands by the time the bus reaches the no-longer-aflame M25.

"So," Crowley croaks. "Where should I tell the driver to drop you off then?"

"Oh," Aziraphale starts. "I suppose- yes, I suppose your place will do. For now."

"For now," agrees Crowley. His grip on Aziraphale's hand tightens just so.

When the bus stops in front of Crowley's building, Aziraphale pulls Crowley to his feet. They stumble towards the front door awkwardly. Neither of them has had much practice walking hand in hand with someone, after all.

Crowley lets them in, and as soon as the door is closed behind them, their eyes meet. Or rather, Aziraphale's eyes meet Crowley's sunglasses.

With the hand not currently gripping Crowley's, Aziraphale reaches up to pull the sunglasses off. He instantly feels Crowley stiffen. His hand stills in mid-air.

"Please?" Aziraphale whispers.

Crowley nods imperceptibly.

Aziraphale gently pulls the sunglasses off and one-handedly places them in his coat pocket. Crowley blinks at him owlishly. His slit pupils are unnervingly dilated; the intensity of his stare sends delicious shivers down Aziraphale's spine.

Crowley is the first to look away, shifting that reptilian gaze towards their joined hands.

"So," he says. "This is new."

"Indeed."

"Pleasant, though."

"Yes," Aziraphale smiles. "Very."

"Drink?"

"Gasping."

Crowley starts to move towards the kitchen but his arm pulls tight, his hand still firmly in Aziraphale's grasp.

"You're going to have to give that back if you want one."

"Oh." Aziraphale frowns. "Maybe I'll come with you."

They shuffle towards the kitchen. Many uncoordinated attempts and one broken glass later, they have managed to acquire a full glass of red each. The thought of simply miracling the wine never crosses their minds. 

They sit on the couch. Again, it's a bit uncoordinated, since they are still loath to let go of each other's hands. Once they are settled in, they toast to, well, not fucking it up too completely.

"I really did think we were in it this time." Aziraphale admits. "Nice touch with the alternate plane of reality."

"Hm."

"Listen," and here Aziraphale takes the deepest breath his human body has ever felt. "For what is worth... I'm glad you didn't leave when you had the chance."

Crowley's thumb has started making circles on Aziraphale's wrist. The gesture feels so inconspicuous, as if he had been doing it all his life, and yet it's like mountains have shifted.

"I don't think I would have liked it. Great big piles of gas and not a decent - Well, not a decent _anything_ in sight."

"Yes. As it were. Thank you."

They sip their wine in silence for a while, and for a while the feeling that pervades them is contentment.

Aziraphale breaks the silence this time. "How long do you think we have?"

"Hm? Until what?"

"Until - Until _they_ come after us."

Crowley sighs. He places his glass on the coffee table and pulls his legs on the couch so that he can face Aziraphale.

"Aziraphale..." He sounds tired.

"I know. I'm sorry. I just. Can't seem to turn it off."

"Whatever's gotta happen, s'gotta happen, angel." Crowley lays fully into the couch pillows, his head on the backrest.

"Right." Aziraphale huffs. "Only this time. This time I will not leave you to deal with it alone."

"S'nice of you." Crowley grins.

"I mean it." Aziraphale turns his body fully towards Crowley, abandons his own glass of wine. He seems to suddenly remember he's still holding Crowley's hand in his and instinctively pulls it up to his chest. "Never again."

Crowley forgets to blink for several seconds.

"You know," he finally says. "If - If we were humans this would be the bit where we kiss."

"Really?" Aziraphale says.

Then, before Crowley has a chance to turn it all into a joke, Aziraphale leans in.

It's not a earth-shattering moment, when their lips finally touch. It's soft and chaste and a bit dry.

But oh, it changes _everything_.

It changes the way Aziraphale looks at Crowley while he holds his hand, it changes the very definition of _love_ in Crowley’s book and it's so beautifully unexpected that Crowley has to pull back.

"How- When- What-" Crowley splutters. He can feel his skin prickle from the radiance of Aziraphale's eyes.

"Oh Crowley," is all Aziraphale is able to say. The pure unfettered knowledge of his love for Crowley has been simmering low for almost a century now and somewhere, a dam has just burst.

"You- You- Nrgh!"

"Quite." Aziraphale agrees.

"Kiss me again."

This time, there's a little more moving of lips involved. A tongue that darts forward to taste. A mouth that opens with a soft groan. And all the while, two hands holding on for dear life.

The bodies the two of them inhabit don't actually need to breath, so the only reason for Crowley's breath to have become so laboured, several minutes of uninterrupted kissing later, is because Aziraphale's weight has slowly shifted to almost completely cover Crowley's body.

"This is," Crowley manages to gasp. "Highly unexpected."

Aziraphale shifts the focus of his lips to Crowley's neck, exploring any inch of exposed skin he can reach.

"You- ah- you don't seem to mind." Crowley's eyes roll back when Aziraphale finds the spot where his pulse is beating inhumanly fast. "Carnal pleasure and all that."

"You make it sound like I’ve never indulged myself," Aziraphale murmurs.

Crowley's mind reels. He thinks back to the 1880s and the gentlemen club Aziraphale was a member of. He thinks of all the humans that potentially got to share this part of Aziraphale and _ohh, don’t go there_.

Aziraphale senses the shift in Crowley's mood, the waves of jealousy launching off into the ether, and he stifles an incredulous laugh.

"My dear, dear boy." Aziraphale pulls back enough to look into Crowley's eyes.

Somehow, through it all, they are still holding hands, and Aziraphale pulls Crowley's up to his lips to kiss his knuckles.

"Do not even remotely compare yourself to those gentlemen."

"Oh easy for you to say," Crowley scoffs. "You slag."

"This is different Crowley," Aziraphale says matter-of-factly. "I love you."

"Yeah, yeah, like you love all things made in Her image and so on."

"No." Aziraphale cups Crowley's cheek with his free hand. "It is of vital importance that you understand me right now: I am in love with you, Crowley."

Crowley's brain does a funny little summersault and then goes offline.

When his synapses reboot, Aziraphale is staring at him in concern.

"Are you alright? You seemed to have... vanished for a little while. It was a bit worrying."

"I'm fine," Crowley coughs out. "You- you really meant that?"

"Of course," Aziraphale says. His entire face is now radiating powerful, uncontainable waves of light.

It's almost too painful for Crowley to look at directly and he wonders what the sight might do to a human brain, unprepared to sustain so much love all at once. From this he must infer Aziraphale has never looked at any of his gentlemen companions such, or he would have heard of unexplainable melted faces in discreet clubs over the course of the past few centuries.

"I-" Crowley reaches up to hide his face in Aziraphale's shoulder. "YouknowIloveyoutoo," he mumbles.

Aziraphale kisses the spot where Crowley's hairline meets his ear, hides a sad smile there.

"I've been so stupid. So blind. How could I ever _think_ demons were incapable of love."

"Propaganda is a hell of a drug, huh."

"Hmm," Aziraphale agrees.

They exchange slow gestures of affection. Their hands are still entwined between their bodies, fingers flexing, sinew pulling and releasing. Every single point of contact is creating a series of untenable electric charges, which release into the air in demure crackles and pops. There's more languid kisses; something at their very core starts to smoulder, gently, gently - until it no longer is so.

There's a need that comes with the human-shaped bodies they inhabit, of friction and release - oldest trick in the book. Quite literally, as both Aziraphale and Crowley were there in the Garden when the humans figured it out for the first time.

Now, on Crowley's expensive leather couch, a handful of hours after almost-Armageddon, a demon and an angel are coming incredibly close to understanding the elating defiance of the original sin.

Aziraphale pulls on the hand he's holding, pins it above Crowley's head. Suddenly there are no layers of clothes between them. There is no couch underneath them. No apartment, no London, nothing but the two of them suspended in between time and space.

There's an explosion of feathers as their wings extend wide around them.

They slot together, like pieces of a puzzle, two halves of a whole, and they rock back and forth. The aforementioned friction reaches a crescendo of rhythmic movements, until it would be impossible to stop it even if either of them had any desire to.

Crowley distinctly thinks this might be the closest he'll ever come to understand the definition of ineffable before he is engulfed in waves of pleasure so intense he almost blacks out. Something at the centre of his chest tugs sweetly, a phantom memory from before his Fall. The absolute certainty that comes with being surrounded by Love in its purest form.

One of his hands seizes up, starts shaking uncontrollably and then Aziraphale's is there again.

"I’ve got you," he says, simply. "I won't let you fall."

What follows can't really be described as something as pedestrian as an orgasm. Maybe multiple of them stacked on top of each other, while your favourite piece of classical music plays in the background and the late afternoon sun warms your skin after a particularly gloomy morning.

For Aziraphale and Crowley, it's the indescribable relief of being allowed to feel each other. The knowledge that they are one and shall be for the rest of time. They breath each other in and it's like they have never known breathing could feel so good.

It takes a while for reality to settle around them again. Slowly, one by one, pieces of Crowley's apartment start to come back into view, the air fills with the distant noises of London, wings fold back into themselves.

They lay on the couch in silence. They don't bother miracling any clothes back on, relishing the feeling of skin on skin which they’ve denied themselves for millennia. Crowley's hands are lost in an abstract pattern across Aziraphale's back.

It would be enough for either of them to stay like this for the foreseeable future, but as reality creeps back in, so does the niggling thought of what retribution Heaven and Hell might have in store for them.

Crowley tightens his arms around Aziraphale's shoulders, feels Aziraphale's fingers dig in his sides, and it's a miracle to even be allowed this much.

"We need to come up with a plan," says Crowley.

Aziraphale pulls back enough to look into Crowley's face and his gaze is not as intense as before, but the righteous love pouring out is enough to make Crowley's blood sing.

"Yes, I rather think we should."

"What did Agnes’ prophecy say again?"

Aziraphale frowns and recites, "'When all is said and done, you must choose your faces wisely, for soon enough you will be playing with fire.'"

"We know what the 'playing with fire' bit means well enough, but what do you think she meant by 'choose your faces wisely'?"

"I'm not quite sure."

"Aziraphale," Crowley asks in a small voice, the memory of an interminable fall so vivid he can still feel the air whooshing around his ears. "What is Heaven going to do to you?"

"I suppose they won't be pleased in the slightest." Aziraphale's voice is stiff. "A strongly worded memo will probably not do."

"Yeah, my lot has probably been waiting eagerly for an excuse to get rid of me."

Aziraphale's face darkens. "They will have to come rip you from my arms."

Crowley's tongue stumbles a bit before he manages to croak out, "Uhng... Likewise."

They share a slow kiss, because they can and because they don't know how many more they're allowed.

"I'm thinking..." Crowley says.

"Hm?"

"We can't beat them in any way one would consider physical. There's many of them and just two of us for a start."

"I'd still like to see them try," Aziraphale grins and Crowley's heart does a little flip.

"Yes, well, I'd rather we made it through in one piece. Getting quite fond of all this touching, angel."

Aziraphale leans in again, rests his forehead against Crowley’s and exhales deeply. "Quite right too."

"So we need to trick them in some way, convince them we're more trouble than we're worth."

"'Choose our faces wisely'... Crowley what if it means disguising ourselves?"

"Possibly, but what would we disguise ourselves as?"

It takes only a beat before realisation flickers in Aziraphale's eyes.

"Each other."

"What?"

"Crowley, we can disguise ourselves as each other."

"How would that even work?"

"Think about it, if I were inhabiting your body, I'd carry enough of an angelic essence with me to trick them into thinking you'd gone native or something."

"Hm, possibly," says Crowley. "But would you be able to pull it off?"

Aziraphale scoffs, but it's good natured. "I've known you for over six thousand years, I think I have an inkling of what your personality is."

Crowley is silent. Aziraphale's idea is insane enough that it might actually work.

"You'd be facing Beelzebub and all the other demons of Hell... alone."

"Yeah, and you'd be going against Gabriel, the biggest twat in all of creation."

They giggle, exhilarated. They don't mention the possibility that they might be found out. That everything could go incredibly wrong and they wouldn't even be together at the very last minute.

"Okay, so, how do we do this?" asks Crowley.

"Oh, I should think," Aziraphale reaches for Crowley's hand, gently laces their fingers together once more. "Like this."

Their joined hands glow, a rush of warmth coils up from their fingertips, while the world around them tips on its head. In just a few short seconds Crowley is staring up at his own snakey eyes.

"Freaky."

"I’ll say." Aziraphale says. He sits up. Well, Crowley's body sits up. It's a lot to process.

They settle in slowly, stretching limbs that are just slightly off, just that bit too long or too short.

Aziraphale is the first to stand up, legs wobbly and a pelvis that feels disjointed from the rest of his body.

"Ugh, how do you manoeuvre this..."

Crowley watches in amusement as Aziraphale tries to coordinate his limbs in a semblance of a demonic strut. It's close, and the untrained eye might very well be deceived, but Crowley can spot the little tells that are so uniquely Aziraphale. The way his shoulders are not as slouched, his mouth not as stiff.

Outside it's just starting to become bright. It's the dawn of the first day of the rest of their lives.

They get dressed in silence, aware now that the small bubble they created for themselves last night is about to burst. Aziraphale-as-Crowley adjusts Crowley-as-Aziraphale's tartan collar.

They decide Crowley-as-Aziraphale should be the first to leave the apartment, get a feeling of this new reality they find themselves in.

After they settle for a rendezvous at St James' park in the afternoon, they stand in the doorway. They look at each other and it really is a bit odd to be looking at their reflection with the knowledge that the other is inhabiting it.

Crowley-as-Aziraphale interlaces their fingers. He pulls Aziraphale-as-Crowley in for a last brief kiss, before he squares his shoulders and turns to walk away.

Aziraphale-as-Crowley watches his retreating figure and his hand feels emptier than it ever has.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @ [ineffablelesbians](https://ineffablelesbians.tumblr.com)


End file.
